US Confirms On-Orbit Space Weapons Deployed — SkimNews
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- Troy Meink, US secretary of the air force, announced on Monday at the Air, Space, Cyber conference that the United States now has "on-orbit, space-control weapons" deployed and circling the globe, declining to detail the systems.
- A US Space Force spokesperson said "space control" can involve "kinetic and non-kinetic means to affect adversary capabilities" and that the systems can be used for "offensive and defensive purposes."
- China's foreign ministry accused Washington of "preparing for war in outer space" and warned against turning space "into a battlefield, as well as an arms race there."
- Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia believes "space must be free of any weapon" and called for "the complete demilitarisation of space."
- Astronomer Jonathan McDowell, formerly of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said it is reasonable to assume the systems include jammers and that Russia and China will now "respond in kind," adding that conflict in space is now "conceptually normalised" by the US.
- Victoria Samson of the Secure World Foundation called the confirmation "huge" because "I don't think any US government official has ever said that before," noting the US must now accept comparable Chinese and Russian deployments.
- The 1967 Outer Space Treaty banned weapons of mass destruction in orbit but does not contain a general prohibition on conventional weapons — a legal gap that today's announcement does not address.
- Russia drew international criticism in 2021 by destroying one of its defunct satellites with a ground-based anti-satellite missile, generating thousands of pieces of orbital debris that experts fear could trigger a Kessler-syndrome cascade.
Why it matters: This is the first time a US official has publicly confirmed deployed space weapons, a doctrinal shift analysts say invites matched Russian and Chinese systems. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty permits conventional weapons in orbit, leaving no legal barrier to the escalation McDowell and Samson now warn is underway.
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